


her voice (& his silence)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cousy Rewatch, Episode Related, F/M, Feelings Realization, Future Fic, Introspection, POV Phil Coulson, Romance, Through the seasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 14:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12390408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Four times Daisy's voice pulled Coulson from the dark (and once Coulson's silence did the same for her).For the #CousyRewatch at johnsonandcoulson.com





	her voice (& his silence)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



The first time is sharp and quick - like those moments in a movie about vampires where someone opens the blind to let sunlight in. It’s the pain of sunlight after a long convalescence home, too. Because it is painful to hear her voice, in here, in this darkness. It was easier to drown.

But she wouldn’t let him drown.

“come back come back come back”

The way she says it, like it’s important that he remains in the world of light, like it matters. Like it matters to her. She sounds desperate to pull him out of where he is, trapped.

But then it’s not just her voice. It happens all at the same time but he feels it later; first her voice, then her hands, undoing the straps that woman talked him into allowing. Then her warmth, her presence besides him on this nightmare table.

He opens his eyes, his throat sore with the joy of her name, a smile torn from him, too.

To be so happy to open his eyes to see her.

Later he will find this a bit embarrassing, it will make him shy, it will make it hard to look at her face, just as much as not looking. He’s only known this young woman for a handful of weeks. It’s all ridiculous, once the moment has passed.

_Come back._

It suddenly felt an easy thing to do, when she asked.

 

+

 

(the second time he can’t hear it and he will live haunted by this for the rest of his life -

he is sure she called for help, down there, in the darkness -her darkness, that became his as well-, bleeding out in a damp cellar in Quinn’s villa; when he cried out, when he needed to be rescued, she heard him, but Coulson couldn’t do the same for her; that’s why he spent the next couple of days damning the consequences, doing anything, legal and not, moral or objectionable, so that her voice wouldn’t be extinguished just because he couldn’t hear her in time)

 

+

 

The next time he tells himself he is ready but he is not.

He lets himself be strapped to the machine - by Skye and Simmons, this time, more willingly this time, but just as unsure this is a choice at all. Skye asks if he’s ready and he lies. Nods. Doesn’t trust his voice at all.

But her voice - “I’ll guide you through” - okay, that’s something he trusts. Something he can hold on to.

It becomes part of his memories, illuminating rooms and faces, making him focus. Coulson puts himself in her hands - well, her voice, but that’s not really a figure of speech.

The last time he was here he was alone. Raina wasn’t company - only there to manipulate him, mine him for her own interest.

Now Skye is here with him, down here in this dark place, in this place of past, this place of confirming his worst fears about himself. What he did to other people. All that pain he caused. And for what? SHIELD? To make better soldiers? No wonder Hydra took over so easily.

“You did the right thing,” Skye tells him. “Can you find their names?”

He wants to believe her.

He wants, at least, to rise up to her idea of him, her kindness when it comes to him. He has to save whoever is left. He has to fix this.

But his grasp on it slips and for a moment he can’t hear her, he can only hear himself, shouting, screaming his throat raw, “I need to know!” over and over, memories becoming nightmares flooding his vision.

He gets free, but only his body. He thrashes around, fighting against Mack and Simmons. They’re trying to help him, part of him understand - or part of him would understand, if his whole head wasn’t filled with his own screams, with his own _I need to know!_ rather than the echo of one of his victims. They are holding him down, but he has to know.

She calls his name to calm him down, an ICER in her hand to protect him from himself.

It does calm him down.

Even in his feverish state her voice makes him understand: he can’t allow anyone else to get hurt because of his choices. He has to do the rest of it alone.

 

+

 

He doesn’t know who she is. He has no way - later he learns that he was robbed his true memories, a trick of a few computer numbers, a cursed book. He doesn’t fully understand, he just knows he was forced to forget her - 

except he remembers her.

It’s her voice. It’s not her face, or the warm comforting hand she puts on his shoulder (though he _will_ remember those two, the familiarity of it, the echo of it all). Or the feelings he’s carried his whole life, that something wasn’t right. 

Because there are many things that look odd in this world, and things and people that will look familiar, even upon meeting them for the first time, but none like the certainty of her voice.

She says it’s not his fault and she talks about him as if he were precious to her, as if he were somebody. No one has ever talked about him that way before, except - he _remembers_.

It’s not that he remembers out there in the world he loves her.

It’s that he remembers she loves him.

 

+

 

He dies, but it’s just a few seconds - for real this time. A few seconds, not days.

It’s a long painful way back, even those few seconds. 

“Coulson.”

Sometimes he forgets he has a first name, because he is always waiting for her voice to say his true name instead.

The pain reminds him of something - oh right, the first time this happened. The time he _really_ died. The coldness of it. But it’s different. He remembers letting go - now he fights to hang on. 

At the end of it it’s Daisy’s face when he opens his eyes. Part of him hoped it would be like that. Not part of him, _all of it_. He’s trying to be honest here.

She looks shaken, her hands on Coulson’s shoulders like she’s been holding him.

He smells the air, there’s an after-storm kind of feel here. Like a battle that has just ended around him. The imagined scent of ashes. Everything is quiet for a moment, but not in a eerie way.

“The Kree?” he asks.

Daisy nods, signalling the team is safe now, he’s safe now, it’s been taken care of. She took care of it, he guesses.

She puts her hand over his chest.

“Something went through your heart,” she says, worry ebbing out of her voice but still coloring it.

Coulson lifts his own hand, resting it above Daisy’s, lacing their fingers together.

“Yeah. I think something did,” he tells her.

It takes her a moment to understand.

She smiles.

Today was a good reminder that his heart is not quite human. A better remainder it is all hers.

 

 

&

 

His silence brings her back.

It’s something alive, a quietness Skye has never had before in her life.

He cuts through the noise of her blood, spilling, gone. She’s sure she was dying. She’s also sure that, sometimes after Quinn shot her, Coulson was there. Maybe he held her - maybe she’s imagining that part. But she knows he came to her.

Even in silence she feels his presence. She can tell he is watching over her sleep, as she makes her way back to the world of the leaving. His silence is his presence. Skye likes it because it’s a listening silence. The way he listens to her. From the beginning. That silence is new. All her life people have talked over her. Not Coulson. How he listened to her reasons for betrayal and thought they mattered more than the betrayal. The way his silence doesn’t make her doubt. The way Ward listens to her makes Skye want to say something worthy of his attention, the way Coulson listens makes her think there’s nothing she could say he wouldn’t accept. Right now she’d rather wake up to the latter.

She has to wake up, even if it hurts. It doesn’t matter. She just wants to live. No matter what. There is a dumb darkness here, something very painful healing in the middle of her body. She knows she will feel it more sharply if she comes back. She has never been shot before but the shock of it wasn’t enough to dull the pain. She wonders what she’ll come back to, what has happened to her body, what has happened to the world. The idea scares her.

But she needs to know.

Coulson is there when she wakes up, Skye realizing her whole body hoped he was the first person she saw when that happened.

Coulson doesn’t say anything at first, watching her wake up. Waits for Skye to be ready. His silence is so warm.


End file.
